Karen Serobovich Vardanyan, 35, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release for breaching U.S. corporate networks and deploying Ryuk ransomware between March 2019 and June 2020. He pleaded guilty in July after being extradited from Kyiv following an April 2025 arrest, with prosecutors saying he and co-conspirators collected roughly 1,610 bitcoins in ransom payments, worth over $15 million at the time, from victims including a Michigan company, a Texas school and an Oregon technology firm.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-09-23
On The Verge's Decoder podcast, former DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter discussed AI companies' requests for antitrust exemptions to jointly coordinate on safety, amid growing alarm from researchers at Anthropic and Google DeepMind who have quit citing unheeded safety risks. Kanter, who led major antitrust actions against Google, Apple, and Ticketmaster under Biden, weighed in on whether such exemptions represent legitimate safety collaboration or a bid for regulatory capture and cartel-like behavior.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-19
Gregg Phillips, an election-fraud conspiracy theorist previously ousted from leading FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, confirmed he is still employed by the Trump administration on administrative leave. He was recently seen visiting the Department of Justice with outgoing pardon attorney Ed Martin, though the nature of his current duties remains unclear.
wired.com
· 2026-08-26
GoKawiil